Stuck on Repeat, Hear the Disk Skip
by enakoritsi
Summary: Dean/Castiel. Castiel's lost and fighting, and Dean's drowning and demanding. Everything is still the same.


_Disclaimer:_ I do not own Supernatural or anything associated.

_A/N:_ Haven't written in a bit. Luckily this came. Please let me know what you think with a review. Thank you, and I hope you enjoy reading.

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Castiel collapses to his knees in the desert, the sand biting through the thin, worthless fabric of his pants. Blood slides wetly down his face, hot and fresh, almost gleeful in the way it coats his cheek. He tilts his head back, watching his opponent come closer with gleaming silver, his own sword slack in his right hand. Castiel realizes how tired he is of kneeling before others, always having to look up.

Gritting his teeth against the flow of bitterness, Castiel forces himself up to his feet and throws the blade with inhuman strength. Nothing changes when the body falls, the angel burnt out and the air filled with acrid death. Castiel is still bleeding, and Dean's prayers are still raging in his ear.

There's still nothing here of worth, and Castiel has wasted his time and destroyed a life.

He pushes the heels of his palms into his eyes and sighs.

After he lets out the breath, Castiel opens his eyes and waits for Dean to turn around. When he does, his eyes widen, his mouth still hanging open with more demands waiting to tip out.

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing," Castiel replies easily, blinking and setting everything right again, vanishing the blood and evidence away. Once again, Dean is free to think he is impervious. Castiel is not surprised when Dean follows through, but he cannot escape the irritation and angry exasperation that seeps under his skin like poison he wishes he could expel.

"Where've you been? I've been calling for hours!"

Dean's eyes are narrowed and frustrated, and Castiel wishes he hadn't come. He would rather be searching for weapons it seems he may never find than be forced to stand under that gaze, so demanding and so unknowing. Castiel hates how Dean can make him feel pusillanimous or selfish depending on his mood, berating his failures while Dean himself walks in darkness. Castiel hates how it cuts into him when he knows that he is doing right, putting the universe, Heaven, before these humans.

He's an angel.

Dean swipes a hand over his mouth, the anger melting out of him quickly and leaking onto the ground.

"It's Sam," and Castiel nods, because it always is. "Veritas, the thing we were hunting-"

"I know," Castiel cuts him off, because he heard it all. Because Dean haunts him like a ghost that angelic power cannot expel, and even as he finds himself half torn to shreds by brothers he loves, Dean and his story continue to hiss into his ear. Castiel can never escape, and it frightens him.

"You know?" Dean snarls, and Castiel can see the wetness in his eyes, how close he is to collapsing again. Castiel can see all the shredded, frayed pieces that make up Dean, all the glue messily slopped around each part. He can see the cracks leaking tears, and Castiel knows he cannot be here when Dean falls apart, not if he ever wants to leave.

Castiel replies, "Yes," and finally turns his attention to the rest of the room, which he recognizes as Bobby's. Sam is slumped over in a chair propped up by the corner, his face clean but bruised, nicked open. Even in this forced sleep, his face is too smooth, nothing like it was before.

"I don't get it, Cas. You know my broth-" Dean cuts off, "Sam isn't even human anymore, dammit, and you don't find it worth your time?"

Castiel turns back to him, feeling too tired to keep the agitation out of his voice, "I do not understand your persistence with having me here when there is nothing I can offer."

"Because that's not what it's always about, Cas!"

Castiel stares at Dean, whose chest is heaving. Dean shifts away from Castiel, moving to stand in front of the unconscious figure and turning his back on Castiel; not that this is the first time.

Castiel knows that he is missing something here, and if he had the patience, he would be able to seal up the fissures separating them so greatly into smooth, clean land. However, the shrieks of his brothers fill his mind, and he can see both factions so brightly that he almost shivers. Castiel doesn't know what he can do, what he has to offer to Dean, but there, he can save some celestial lives. He can inch maybe a step closer to snuffing out the wave of entropy and anarchy threatening his home.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Castiel offers, preparing to depart, and Dean laughs roughly, his head tilted towards his chest.

"No, I see how it is," Dean mutters, still not looking at him, and it is enough for Castiel to pause, waiting for him to go on.

"You know what, fuck you!" Dean's voice grows exponentially in volume, and he spins. Dean's face is hard and furious, but worse, the skin below his eyes is reddened and wet.

"You don't find all this worth your precious time, fine! Get out, and don't expect to hear from me. I'm done calling you."

Part of Castiel wants to jab back that that would make everything so much easier, if Dean reined in his selfish pestering. How much easier would it be to fight, to dance the deadly battle, without Dean's voice itching in his ear, without the transparent vision of these two men that he cannot shake, for it sticks to his eyes like the film of an illness?

"And you know what?" Dean bites, his hands curling into those common fists of his. "When you have some freakin' angelic weapon pop up? Go find it without our help! You don't have time for this-" He sweeps out his hand, gesturing to Sam and himself violently, "-then don't expect me to lend a hand finding the shit you lost!"

This shocks Castiel for a moment, sends him reeling for an unidentifiable pocket of time before he steadies himself. He knows Dean doesn't mean it, but the words insinuate something about himself that sends the tiniest spark of guilt under his skin, and the feeling makes him feel skittish, ready to lash out.

Instead, Castiel simply sets his shoulders and pushes everything down. He is an angel, a warrior. This is all pettiness to him, unimportant, trivial minutiae. It has to be. Just keep on repeating.

"I'm sorry, Dean," he repeats for the second time, because it's familiar and easy, and because somewhere deep inside, under duty and obligation and grace, he truly is. Underneath the anger and hypocritical but fair fury, he wants to stay.

"Yeah, well," Dean snorts, eyes flashing. "You can go be as sorry as you want somewhere else. Should've known better."

He starts to leave the room, but curiosity flutters, and Castiel reaches out, "What do you mean?"

Dean doesn't even gift him by stopping. Instead he stomps to the door, only throwing out, "Should've known you wouldn't give a damn."

Castiel stands there, alone and abandoned, for a moment after Dean disappears into the shadows of the house. He shifts his head to look at Sam, wrists and legs tied to the chair, hollow and empty. This isn't right, he knows, because Sam doesn't deserve this. None of them do.

But they have to deal with it anyway. So Castiel departs, because he is needed elsewhere, and these two human men are not more important than the fate of Heaven; even if he cannot force that deep, pathetically human part of himself to believe that.

Sometimes, his brothers turned enemies find disgusting pleasure in fighting on Earth, because angels battling on dirt and soil often means vessels and human death. Castiel stares down at the angel he has just killed, but he ignores the charcoal, ashen dust of wings. He stares at the massacred human body; the blood dripping from so many channels, the crushed cheek and caved in stomach. Castiel tries to tell himself that this doesn't matter, that this is a regretful sacrifice for the good of the whole.

But Castiel has never been good at the ends justify the means. That's what landed him in this mess of quicksand in the first place.

Strangely enough, as the day passes, Dean does not call. Castiel is surprised, because Dean is as predictable as he is demanding, and once his anger simmered down, Castiel was sure than his mind would itch with Dean's prayer. Surely he has need of something; a question to answer, a solution for Sam's unfortunate predicament.

But Dean stays silent, and while part of Castiel feels vindictive, another part of him feels lost.

Then he hears the cry of an ally, and Castiel just does not have the time.

Castiel doesn't know how much time passes before he allows himself to think of Dean again, but he knows that the period spans more than several days. In that time, he has not heard Dean's inquisitive prayers once worm its way into his ears; nor has he heard Sam's. The second is expected, but the first truly is not.

One of the many voices that plagues him bites at him from the inside, wounding him with words of his weakness and the depth of his responsibility, but Castiel still arrives to search out Dean. He's in Bobby's kitchen, twirling an empty bottle of beer between his fingers, and when Castiel appears, he slides his eyes over foggily.

"Go away," he states immediately, and Castiel tries not to take offense.

"Dean-"

"Just go away," Dean repeats, tipping up his bottle and trying to drain a few last drops out of it, but it truly has nothing left to give him. He tosses it back onto the table carelessly, watching it wobble before settling straight.

Castiel finds that he wishes he hadn't come, because he isn't sure what he wants to say, how he wants this to go. Because he really cannot make his ties here, not when Heaven needs him, but he doesn't want to hack what he has here off either; slice and gnaw at it until it's just a bloody stump of a connection, drained of everything that gave it meaning.

'S'not cause you don't have all the answers, you know," Dean starts speaking, fiddling with the bottle since he can't just let it be. "I'm not expecting any miracles from you, not really. Even though sometimes," he grumbles derisively, "I wish you just knew. Being an angel and all."

"But, it's just," Dean mumbles on, and Castiel wonders how many bottles were drained that simply aren't visible at the moment, "we, I thought. Thought we were friends, Cas. And you don't even give a shit that Sam's not even Sam."

"Dean," Castiel starts, still standing stiff, "You must know-"

"You always talk about your brothers, being ashamed, fighting," Dean interrupts, pushing the bottle off the table and letting it shatter. Castiel wonders where Bobby is. "Well, mine's upstairs, and he's an inch away from being a monster. I can't feel bad just because yours are a bunch of dicks."

"I can't-"

And that's the root of it all, because something in Dean shatters then, falls to the ground in little pieces just like the bottle on the floor. He has tears in his eyes but he wipes them away furiously, his hands punishing and ashamed.

"Yeah, yeah, you can't," Dean reiterates with a toxic tone coating his tongue, forcing himself to his feet.

"I'm not stupid, Cas," Dean goes on, giving Castiel a sharp look for all the shiny puddles flooding his face, sloshed around now by his clumsy fingers. "I know we didn't fix a damn thing, that everything's still ready to blow. I get that you've got stuff to do. I get it."

"I don't think you do, Dean," Castiel keeps his voice quiet and tight, but Dean's words only set off further frustration in him. For all Dean likes to babble on about how much he grasps, despite what he demands, Castiel knows he really does not. "If you did, you would not expect me to abandon an entire war because you're having issues with your brother."

Dean startles as if he's been slapped in the face, and he pulls back, adding more distance between him and Castiel, although Castiel believes he does so with subconscious will.

"What the fuck kind of friend are you, Cas?"

And then Castiel almost loses control. For all he has given, sacrificed, been dragged along for; for all the blood and death he has waded through, drowned in, choked on; for all he himself has seen and suffered for, for this man, and to end here, chastised and condemned because he is fulfilling the role Dean himself carved for him, unknowingly or not: it is the second time Castiel wants to truly, undeniably hit Dean.

"What right do you have to ask that of me?" Castiel replies in heavy, low tones, and Dean's stance stiffens, knowing there was a line, and he decided to cross it. "I have given more to you and your brother than I have at times had to give, and you question that because I'm at war?"

Dean had allowed more space to slip between them a few moments before, but Castiel takes it back and swallows it down, edging closer with hard lines etched into his face and red-hot ones burning in his soul.

"There is an entire world out there, Dean," Castiel gestures widely even as he strides forward. "A whole world of miserable suffering and of people who will die if I don't win each and every battle. And I'm not."

"Thought you can't care about people," Dean bites, and Castiel responds by shoving him into the wall, pleased when he can see pain.

"You wish me to mourn every death, every sacrifice? Waste time when there are other people out there alive who can be saved?"

"That's what it used to be about!" Dean snarls, still standing pressed against the wall to keep away from Castiel.

"It cannot be that way anymore!" Castiel all but shouts, forcing himself to stay put and not inflict more damage. "I understand it's not pretty, Dean," he almost mocks, a trace of that human future Dean was so sure he never had to think about again, "but sentimentality is going to get everyone killed. Including you; including Sam."

Silence tentatively returns, slipping out of the corners of the room to blanket everything again, wary of when it will be forced to slink back away. Dean stares at him, but Castiel only looks back, not knowing what the other is searching for. Hopefully, he is coming to terms. A little voice whispers that he knows Dean better than that, unfortunately.

"Dean," Castiel finally sighs, feeling the anger evaporate into the air as he gains control over himself again, fading back into something impassive and just a little bit sad. "Believe me, I-"

"No."

The word is gruff, almost faint, but it's still heavy, and it cuts Castiel off abruptly.

"No," Dean reiterates, shaking his head. No reflection resides in his voice, just something shell-shocked, the look on his face like that of a victim who had a bomb explode right behind him, sending him sprawling.

"You know, I," Dean tries to go on, his face almost melting back into something human, but then he laughs. It's too quiet, too restrained, almost crazed. "I used to believe in a lot of things."

He tilts his head back, still gazing at Castiel, mouth twisted with a smug mirth that doesn't fit.

"I believed in my life, in hunting evil, disgusting monsters. I believed in Sam. I didn't believe in anything feathery and full of shit."

"I believe, " Dean's tone changes, shifts, "that part of my brother is still rotting in Hell, sharing a bunk bed with the Devil. I believe that the whole world's gone crazy, because I can't find one golden rule that ain't broken now. I believe-"

Dean scrapes a hand over his face, mouth still full of something damned, "I believe that I might end up dead or worse trying to fix Sam, and I sure as hell believe that I'll go through with it all anyway."

Fingers curling for a moment, he drops them, staring directly at Castiel.

"But I also sure as hell do not believe in you."

The words are sure, and cruel, and part of Castiel flinches, remembering when the human in front of him did. When Dean pleaded, pushing every button he could like an infant child hoping something, anything might happen, because he was sure that Castiel could and would.

"Because, I was wrong," and it seems Dean's not done. "Because all you care about is the end, and I'm stuck here in the right fucking now."

Dean starts to shift away, pushing off the wall and inching slowly, pathetically, towards the room's exit. Castiel watches, because he has no words he can think of to say.

"Because," and Dean pauses, this time gracing him with a single look back, "it's not always about having answers, Cas. It's not about swooping in like the world's worst costumed superhero."

"It's about being there, because people need you. Not to do things, but just to be there."

"To care," Dean says, raising his hand and squeezing two fingers together, "just a little, tiny bit. Or at least to pretend to."

Dean turns away with a grunt, though, and starts walking again.

"But you can't, can you? You're too damn busy saving the world, huh? Yeah, well, keep telling yourself that."

Castiel knows that this has set him free; that if he leaves now, he has no further obligations. Dean will not call him to help with supernatural encounters, or to slice up Sam, find the poison festering inside of him, and heal him back together. Because Dean has an entire wealth of pride, and although maybe in an easier past, he would bow to an apology of his own, this Dean has lost and is disappointed and will not.

And Castiel thinks, continuing to shut out the screams of dying angels as he has for the entire confrontation, even as it galls him; he thinks about what his existence would be. Fighting would be so much more efficient, for although for some reason he cannot block out Dean, there will be no Dean calling for him. It would be so much easier to ignore the resonsibility pulling at his soul as he focuses on more important, world-defining things.

Castiel could finally be what he needs to be, rather than who he wants to be.

One weight slips off his shoulders, but it settles around his feet instead, filling him with foolish, un-angelic fear. Here, in this solitude, he can admit that, no, he does not want to lose Dean. He…cannot lose Dean. Despite the selfishness, the lack of understanding that often slaps him across the face, Castiel knows that Dean is humanity; connection and bond. Dean is human, disgustingly and awfully, for he wants and takes, but when he wants to, when he can, he gives, too. Because Castiel has seen concern, and he has seen friendship and deeper, wonderful things, and because Castiel has the ability to step back and see the root of every negative word, if he really tries.

And…

Because no matter what he tells himself, no matter how he pleads and tears at his soul to construct something cold and crystal, Castiel is selfish, too. He needs this, wants it, cannot bear to let it go and stop answering, not only Dean's call, but his own. He's too entangled, so far away from what he once was to ever find his way back again, and he knows it.

So Castiel follows Dean upstairs, just not the human way.

Instead, he finds Dean in what he believes to be the guest bedroom, sitting on the bed itself with his head in his hands. His arrival was without sound or disturbance, so Castiel takes the moment to watch Dean; the defeated slope of his shoulders, the frustrated sighs clouding the air around his tortured form.

"You're wrong, Dean."

Every tiny, almost imperceptible human movement Dean was subconsciously making freezes, but Dean gives no other inclination that Castiel's words affect him in anyway.

"What are you still doing here?" he grumbles into his hands, and Castiel walks over to sit next to him on the bed. It's uncomfortable and strange, and Castiel has to concentrate to keep himself from falling into Dean, which would not convey the strong message of camaraderie yet underlying independence that Castiel is going for.

"I need you to understand," Castiel attempts, for once looking forward instead of at Dean. "I have been restored, I have duties that are required of me, that I want to uphold. Heaven is my home, Dean, and it's burning."

"And it is a soldier that wins wars," Castiel goes on slowly, deeply, "not a man. I cannot…be human. I cannot always be here. There is a price for righteous power, and that price is giving up what little humanity I may possess."

Castiel sighs, finally looking at Dean, who still is hiding like a coward behind is hands.

"At least for now."

Dean sniffs then, wet and tired, and drops one hand so half his face is visible.

"Wars don't end, Cas," he tries to spit, but the words come out weary. "They never end."

Instead of lying, Castiel nods a little and replies, "I know."

After a moment he continues, "But this one has to."

Dean looks like he wants to protest, but instead he just shakes his head before leaning back and taking a deep breath, trying to ground himself somehow.

"Dean, I," Castiel tries to begin, but here he finds his abilities wanting. "Even if I cannot…be here, I-"

"I know, Cas," Dean cuts him off quietly, and they're both just too tired of misunderstanding and bickering, shouting and pushing and needing such different things.

Castiel attempts again, "Dean," this time with his hands, reaching out and holding stubbled skin between his palms. He looks at this wrecked, trying man and wonders why he ever thought that he had succeeded in saving him.

"This is who we are," Castiel gives, hoping Dean understands. "This is…what we have."

Castiel isn't surprised when Dean pushes forward, when needy, desperate to deny lips hit his.

Because he knows this; because he's planted it with ignorance, watched it grow in sunlight he tried to douse, fled from its tendrils when it stood taller than his own form. Because Castiel felt it, and so did Dean, but there were reasons, hopes for normalcy and hopes for home that were enough to smother what was trying to grow under their reluctant feet. Because Castiel felt it and tried to kill it in his own way, with distance and purpose, with avoidance and anger, with angelic fire. Because Dean tried, too, because this isn't the touch he always wanted, the life he secretly dreamed about and got to taste for one microscopic second of the world.

Because Dean's lost it all, and Castiel could, and here they are anyway.

When Dean's hands curl into his hair, guilty and still touched with frustration, and Castiel pulls him closer, they both know nothing is going to change. Castiel still has duty, and Dean still has expectations. They both just understand the whys a little better.

That's all.

When Dean pulls away, he's breathing rapidly, superficial but quick, and Castiel knows he made a decision. He will never be free now, no matter how much he ever might try to pull away.

But instead of falling into this the way part of him wants to, or fleeing back to battle like most of him knows he needs to, Castiel stands and looks down at Dean.

"I will go search for answers about Sam."

He disappears, and Dean only watches him go, blood still rushing and lips tingling. He ignores it all and goes to check on his brother, trying to think of one damn word to say.


End file.
